contrary
by xoVanilla-Bean
Summary: After Delilah is locked away in the Void, the Outsider continues to visit Emily for no other reason than to see her. Emily/Outsider
1. i

a/n; It usually happens where I write something, try to finish it before my inspiration dies, and usually have it end up on the back burner forever. I wrote these drabbles several months ago when I finished the game, kind of gave it an ending, and now I'm posting them.

Extremely inspired by shortcircuitify's story _Bow._ Definitely check it out if you're an Emily/Outsider person, as I'm assuming you probably are.

Happy reading!

i.

* * *

Emily rubs at her left hand in her private chambers, the ebb of power soothing her nerves when she wakes up in cold sweats from her dreams and nightmares. It is an unconscious habit, bred by the unrelenting calm the symbol remits when called upon. It is burned into her skin, but hidden underneath the guise of her flesh, only revealing itself when she truly uses its physical powers—the ones she still brings forth when, on some nights, she must escape through her window down to the streets of Dunwall, into the shadows of the back alleys and sewers and aisles of paved roads. She had believed, perhaps prematurely, that she would not feel the necessity to do this anymore after Delilah had been entombed in her own distorted reality.

However, dissimilar to how she used to sneak out to escape her life at court, she now leaves to continue it. She pulls up her cloth mask, and she watches the people. She watches the ones who do not sleep, the ones destitute and jaded, the beggars, the poor. They will come up from this, one day. Now that she knows how to rule better, and wiser, and to not ignore the wrong-doings she used to believe she had no control to change.

Sometimes on these nights, especially the dim, inky black nights that hold several more shadows, she'll stop her brisk watching, stopping in the corner of one of these shadows. She breathes in through the mask she wears, inhaling memories and dust of a time gone. She closes her eyes, and she knows she isn't the only one watching. She is never the only one watching anymore—not with the mark she bears, and not with the events transpired.

She has an audience now, now and forever, observing her actions, evaluating as she climbs along the streets of her empire. Never did she wonder about this during the reign of Delilah—so ensconced was she in gaining back her rightful place that she did not dwell on the depthless eyes of a god, watching.

In the darkest levels of shadow, she has never been so acutely aware of the supernatural world, swinging like a pendulum against the ordinary. The barrier between is flimsy and weak, as thin as the curtains hanging in her bedroom windows.

The Void has been so quiet when the people had begun to call her Empress again. Quiet in the way trees are without their breezes to sing.

She breathes out long and soft. She opens her eyes, and she is swiftly back on the ledge leading into her chambers.

Though the Void has been quiet without its whispers, it has been deafening in the way it peels her skin back with its eyes.

She slides through the window between the curtains, and her hand pulsates with beckoning force. Her heart thuds before she realizes she's surprised—lips parted in a breathless gasp as she looks up to see his face an inch away from her own. The distance is disputable, should one want to be contrary.

"Hello, Empress," he speaks, lips curled into a disdainful smirk. His voice is dry, twisting her title into a sarcasm of sorts. It fills the air as only a god's can, though it can't have been any more than a whisper.

"You didn't think I had forgotten about you, did you?"

He dissolves into a plume of smoke, rematerializing on her right.

"What kind of god would I be if I forgot about my most interesting mark bearer?"

She swallows her shock as quickly as she can, though she doesn't believe that it's shock at all. She knows what shock feels like with an intimacy that must rival all others—no, this is a different kind of feeling, with her heart lodged in her throat.

It does not matter what it is. She closes her mouth, teeth clicking with the force. Besides, she mentally berates herself, it is unbecoming for an Empress to gape like a fish whatever the circumstance.

She turns to look at him, finding his solid eyes. She's found, in the times before, that he cannot stand eye contact for long. She thinks it almost unnerves him, perturbs him in such a way that he can't control. How many can say they've seen the thoughts through the Outsider's eyes? Isolated as he is, and as selective as he claims, the number must be few.

"You have it wrong," she says. "You've been watching ever since I released my father from stone."

He settles away from her at the deduction, clasping his hands behind his back. He continues to stare, which surprises her.

"Not much for intrigue happening in Dunwall these days," he deflects. "Not since you banished Delilah to her own delusional design of the world. You've given her her own little section of the Void. I must thank you for that unwanted company, your _Imperial Majesty_."

Disdain lurks in his voice, though the lines around his eyes are softer and his smirk grows into something pliable.

"Forgive me," she says, and she can't help how her shoulders slacken or the lightness that begins to creep into her tone. "At the time, I thought you could use the company."

He walks around her, crossing his arms over his chest. "Don't worry. She's locked away in a long forgotten corner, very far away from me."

"Oh, good. I was beginning to think she was taking advantage of you again."

He has not taken his eyes off her once. "You jest," he says after a moment, the slight inflection sounding like surprise. "Empress Emily Kaldwin knows about humor."

It isn't a question, nor is it an accusation. It is simply an observation.

She narrows her eyes at him in thought. "Even rulers love to tease, Outsider, possibly more than most."

"I must beg to differ," he counters, removing the distance between them once more. He stops right in front of her. "I have not seen joy, much less a smile from you, until tonight."

She's not sure when she began to smile. It isn't large—just a tilt of the corners of her mouth—but it's enough. He's right. There had been nothing to smile about when her world slipped from her palms. Blood from her servants and loyal guards smearing the walls of Dunwall Tower the first day, her father silent in stone captivity, the dark loneliness of despair.

"You came into my life at the wrong time."

The Outsider waves his hand in the small space between them, and she is suddenly staring at a twelve-year-old Emily.

"No," she hears, his voice an all-encompassing echo around her. "There was never a right time."

The little girl has sad eyes, though she smiles bright and large for the painting. Then she's fifteen, all petulant, griping most of the time, though very self-aware. Can't disappoint Corvo, after all, so she continues to smile.

Twenty, now, sneaking out, watching the people and craving something, but unsure and still on unstable footing. Filled with thoughts of running away from the court and planning and garnering respect, and those timeless rendezvous with Wyman. Perhaps it's those times where a true smile surfaces, but she has a great poker face by this time in her life, and does the smile reach her eyes when she meets him up on the rooftops? As he's said, he knows her real face. That has to be true, doesn't it?

She's jolted back into the present. She takes a step to steady her balance, and the Outsider's arm comes around her back and onto her hip to steady her.

"I've seen glimpses of you through Corvo, Empress," he says, and it still amazes her at how he's warm and alive—not tepid or cold or that elusive nothing. "Always so serious and studious. Thoughtful and sharp. He worried about you, you know. Though he had nothing to worry about. Love tends to do that, causing anxiety from imagined conflicts of the spirit. Surrounded by so many loving caretakers, there was never any concern for a poor upbringing or forgotten lessons to be taught. You were clever when you were young, only to grow cleverer as you grew up." He pauses in his narration, boldly outlining her bottom lip with his thumb. She jerks her head to him out of reflex, and the touch of his thumb disappears.

"The only worrisome thing, Majesty, is that you never seemed quite happy. Happy enough to deceive, but not happy enough inside the heart."

She did not expect an introspective lesson on herself tonight—much less from the Outsider himself, in the decorated intimacy of her own chambers—and she does not want to continue. She's locked inside of her thoughts much too often as it is, already.

She turns her body to face him, the hand that was on her hip now on the small of her back. She places a hand on his chest and another on his shoulder. He gives her an intensely curious stare.

"How can you accuse me of unhappiness," she whispers, and she's close enough where her breath must hit his throat, "when you take joy in watching peoples' lives unfold into tragedies?"

She's close enough to see the change in his smirk—his lips curling just enough to show the tips of his teeth. She'll call it a smile, if only out of spite for him mocking her own.

"You have me wrong, Emily," he says, and it's the first time she's heard him speak her name without a royal attachment on the front of it. She notes the alteration in his features—the subtle yet definite difference in the shadows under the same light. "I continue to take joy in watching you, and your life is far from a tragedy. Can you tell me why that is?"

He's gotten closer, somehow. It is a competition to see how close they can get in this bubble of flesh and heat—she feels it racing up her spine like a crackling fuse.

An answer—perhaps _the_ answer—is on the tip of her tongue, but she can't quite reach it. "You're immortal. How can a mortal like me still interest you in any way?"

"Ah, dear Emily," he drawls, and his nose nearly bumps her own. If he recognizes her hesitation, he mentions nothing. Instead he says, "If that's your answer, you have much to learn."

Just like that, he vanishes. He's gone, and she stumbles forward from the lack of support. She immediately straightens, brushing her still immaculate hair back on her head and exhales. Her cheeks are flushed, and the warmth from him fades from her hands.

There's a shine in her eyes. Her heart is thumping against her chest, and she feels a strange circulation of adrenaline and euphoria course its way through her at a galloping pace.

She feels…alive. Not spurned on by vengeance or remorse or guilt or hate or triumph—no. She is unencumbered by any emotion. She is simply and plainly and only alive.

She touches her left hand, and she smiles.


	2. ii

ii.

* * *

Emily is unsure how the Outsider can visit her without warning and seemingly whenever he wants.

During her journey, he would only visit in dreams or at the shrines she would find. She's not the type to create a shrine, and considering her continuous, vivid nightmares, he doesn't seem inclined to interrupt them.

Of course, there is the one exception: Stilton's manor. There were no shrines or dreaming to bring him forth to her—only her desperate hopes and confusion. Then he was sitting on the piano and giving her much more than her desperate hopes should have rewarded her—holding time in the crook of her hand. It was a very powerful token. It was like the heart, and the supernatural powers, and the bouts of wisdom. In the end, he was much like a loyal supporter, and she attributed him to most of her success in accomplishing the outcome.

That is where the fondness stems from, she thinks, because she doesn't mind his intrusions into her life one bit.

The next time he appears, she is in the middle of her nighttime ritual. She is taking out the clips in her hair when she feels him there, the striking zap of his stare in between her shoulder blades.

She inhales sharply before she turns in the seat at her vanity, and he is sitting on her window sill, his face as blasé and uncaring as it has ever been.

Her first thought is that she's in her sleeping garments—but it is a silly notion. They are just as modest as her daily outfits, the only difference being they are less stifling and much more comfortable.

"What will you dream of tonight, Empress?" the Outsider says, thoughtful and dry. "Will it be a repeated vision? Perhaps Delilah will puncture your neck with her heel again? Or will Jindosh's clockwork soldiers shred you apart?"

She discontinues taking down the rest of her hair, pausing to focus solely on him. "I usually hope for those. Nothing is more frightening than watching the people you love die and leaving you behind, to wallow in your failure to save them."

"They are dreams," he says, and it sounds exasperated. "Harmless, fabricated fiction from your own mind."

She glances at the framed picture of her mother on her vanity desktop, set slightly apart from the rest of the frames.

"Fabricated grief is grief all the same," she answers.

His smoke wisps through him, and he sidles up to her, suddenly sitting beside her on her bench. She's not sure she'll ever understand the comfort that emerges within her from his attentions.

"I've seen grief warp the minds of countless souls in the world, much like greed or wrath or love. Monosyllable words that can twist even the finest of minds. Yet, these don't affect you. They polish your mind instead of tarnish."

His eyes are gleaming in that black way that they do, but she knows there is emotion in there, like a foreign language in its uncertainty with how to communicate. Clumsy yet refined. Beautiful and strange.

He stares at her, and she realizes she's never had any of her hair down in their encounters. She wonders if he notices any of this—they are very close to one another—but the proximity reminds her that these actions speak loud enough.

Her mind abruptly changing, she lifts a hand to begin the chore of taking out the rest of her clips. Small chunks of hair fall with each unclasping. "What is it, then, that will be the bane of my existence? The thing that will twist my mind?"

They both know—at least, for now, they think they do. It hangs heavy in the air between them, this otherworldly infatuation, this slow unlocking of great potential. And like most great things, it will have trouble ending without consequences.

He stares at her for a few stolen moments, her hair caught in the barriers of his eyes. They are as gleaming as marble, just like mirrors. "The most brilliant of humans have an ugly habit of being their own downfall. You, though, Empress…" he reaches out and pushes a lock of newly loosened hair behind the cage of her ear. "You are unlike any other."

A soft swirl of smoke consumes him, and in a blink, he is gone again.


	3. iii

iii.

* * *

He doesn't visit for two more weeks.

The length makes her pause to question, as the wait between the first two were mere days apart.

She doesn't dwell on it—her duty as an Empress is full time. She opens her doors to the people, listening to their grievances and problems. She meets with captains of the docks, corresponds with the new Duke of Serkonos and the Dukes and Duchesses of Tyvia and Morley, opening more ports and easier access to imported goods for the people of Gristol. She writes to Wyman, too, when she can, but she hasn't been able to relate anything to him about her journey back to the throne. She's not quite sure if she's able. Stories always seem much different through the eyes instead of the mouth. But he will listen when she needs it. He's always been so good at that.

When the Outsider does show himself, hovering above her bed like a specter when she walks through her doorway, her marked hand pulsates, and all anxiety she's let build behind her eyes fade into a pool of forgotten necessity.

"Outsider," she greets.

"Empress," he says back. "You look awfully weary this evening."

"A stipulation of my station," she says offhandedly, though she will admit that her sleeping schedule has still not yet been corrected since Delilah.

"It's never affected you this much before," he says it with so forward a tone that she stumbles on her immediate argument against it. She's never liked to admit that the job is difficult, but he's caught her off-guard and tired.

"You're right," she confesses. "It is a great deal more to me now than it ever has been." She avoids his stare, suddenly unable to look at him while facing the truth behind her words. She clenches a fist at her side for a moment.

"That embarrasses you?"

She looks up sharply at his easy identification of her feelings. She relaxes her hand and attempts to look unbothered.

"Yes," she softly says. "I was much more selfish before, letting my people flounder in their rot while I did nothing." She pauses. "You know this. You've mocked me about it before."

"I mock everyone," he says dismissively.

"Yet you gave me a lot of information along the way, things that were…more than generous at times," she trails inquiringly, watching him as he sets his feet to the floor and clasps his hands behind his back.

"No," he says. "Not more than generous. Just generous enough."

She remembers seeing the slab where his first death was, witnessing the still smoldering embers in his eyes around the scene of the beginning of godhood. She could perceive the subtle emotion there, hanging on the settled air around her. It covered her like a sheen of dew on morning grass.

She decides to say as much. "You showed me where you first became a god; why?"

His answer is so quick to be stated and so succinct in tone that it feels as if he's had this answer on his tongue for a while.

"To show you how people do not always understand something remarkable, but when they do it can create powerful actions," he says. "I am only a god because that is what people wanted me to become. I could not do it on my own. But you proved something to me—that one person, the right person, can completely change the world. Delilah almost did, and she was close—close to becoming a god on her own in the mortal world. I watched her throughout the years, got to see her broken down and rebuilt into something impressive and insidious. Yet, her lust for power and her greed and her reliance on her witchcraft made her weak and vulnerable. She could not rely on only herself. You, Empress, on the other hand. You destroyed without spilling blood. You never once fell to the wayside." He pauses, drilling a hole into her with his black stare. "You were remarkable on your own. You had a spirit powerful enough to conquer and to rule without leagues of witches, without conning or deceiving.

"Corvo is close to what you are, but he doesn't quite reach you. You are on a plane all to yourself."

She doesn't realize her neck is so warm until he touches her cheek with his fingertips. Her lips part and she says, "I wasn't completely alone." She reaches up and touches the back of his hand that rests on her cheek. "I had support. Anton and…Billie," she says softly. "You."

He retracts himself, hovering above the ground a few inches so that he is at a great height looking down upon her.

"Ah, yes, Anton, who was so old and full of creaking bones he could not do much more than need rescuing. And Billie—part of the gang who murdered your mother. They were very stable pillars in your journey."

His sarcasm is usually so subtle, but the words he says now are anything but.

"They had intelligence—information I would not have been able to procure myself. That is something I desperately needed, and much more valuable than something akin to manpower or witchcraft." She shakes her head minutely. "They also provided me refuge on the sea. What more could I have been left wanting?"

She then walks up closer to him, tilting her head back more and more as she erases the distance. "And we can't forget you. In my dreams, in the shrines, in Stilton's home—giving me the power of time. Giving me my mother's heart. And I think," she pauses, cotton lodged in her throat for a sudden, quelling moment. She tries valiantly to swallow it. "I think," she rasps, "part of my soul now, too."

Her hand burns gently, and electrical hum crawling up from her palm to her shoulder.

"You've made me somewhat godly, too, haven't you?"

"I offered," he says, after a pregnant pause. "You accepted."

"That's all?"

The thing about the Outsider is that he is amoral. Honor, dignity, pride—they are words and ideas, not tangible attributes. He has no need for them like mere mortals do. They cling onto them because they need meaning to their lives. They need stability, and those flimsy ideals give them the structure their soft psyches must have to keep them standing. To strip a man, all one must do is crack their pride, burn their dignity, insult their honor—and usually, the man will do the rest himself. The soft insides are no longer protected when what makes them comes into question. That's the tragedy of man—they are, themselves, their own downfalls. Fracture them, and they become nothing more than animals roaming the world for something they can't quite remember anymore.

That is why the Outsider takes so much joy in watching the wiles of humanity. It is not that he doesn't understand them—no, he knows human emotion. He can feel just as man can, but his perception is of an alien nature. When he sees the fractures, he is amused. When he sees unexpected actions, he is fascinated. When he sees death, he smiles because they are so, so afraid of the _nothing_. When he sees love bloom, he yawns in boredom.

When she asks him the simple question, he falters.

Emily watches him closely. She has a mind to think—no, she knows he wants to say yes. Of course that's all. He gave her a crumb of the Void so that he could watch the story unfold, and he was intrigued by her choices. _That's all._

And yet, he still watches her. _You have much to learn._

He is silent for a while. She doesn't imagine the small scowl that appears on his face, creating shadows along the line of his mouth, unmasking the rigidity of his jaw.

Then he is gone in a plume of silver and purple smoke.

"No," she sighs into the air. "I didn't think so."


	4. iv

iv.

* * *

She's on the rooftop of the tower, this time. Energy zapped from the daily petitions and scheduling, she could only muster enough of it to get out of her stuffy room and out into the open air. There is nothing quite like the nighttime atmosphere, the stars providing a million miniature spotlights, and just enough light to create shadows to hide her when she wants to vanish from the world for a minute.

The Outsider sits quietly beside her, and they are silent for a long time.

Finally, Emily says, "You were wrong, you know. About when you showed your observations of my unhappiness."

He sighs. "Denial looks unbecoming on an Empress, your majesty."

"No, really," she says, almost laughing at his answer. "You had left out a very important person in my life in those scenes."

"Did I?"

His tone is blatantly apathetic. She gives him a wondering look. He looks back at her, and it almost seems like he's challenging her to continue. She easily takes the challenge, because it isn't a challenge at all.

"Yes, you did. I have a feeling you did it on purpose."

His face turns from apathetic to curious. "Why would I omit a person that you claim is so important? Empress," he says, his voice a cutting, sinister whisper. "I am nothing if not brutal with my honesty. If I didn't include a someone, it is because they don't pertain an inch to you."

"Perhaps," she says, unimpressed at his efforts. "Though you must know you can't manipulate me, Outsider. Wasn't it you who said you won't mettle into the affairs of the decisions people make? Only that you'll give the tools of power to see what they will do on their own, without the pressure of your opinion."

He makes a noise that is akin to a scoff. "I would not demean either of us with manipulation."

"Omission, then," she counters. "Perhaps it is someone you don't care for, so you didn't add them."

"Ah," he says. "That sounds more in character of me."

There's the sarcasm again.

Emily catches herself rolling her eyes—she shouldn't. Even as comfortable as she is in the Outsider's company, it won't help anything is she is completely and utterly Emily.

It's a funny notion, as she sits on a rooftop with him, worrying about being herself.

"Alright. Then it won't surprise you that Wyman is visiting next month, will it?"

The Outsider sidles closer to her, bumping her hip with his own in a smooth gesture. He rests his arm across her back, his palm resting on the roof near her other hip. They are a breadth away from touching.

"Ah, Wyman," he says into her ear. "Corvo doesn't like him. It must be why he wasn't pictured in my swift montage of your unhappy little life."

He doesn't sound the least bit affected by the name of Wyman, and she realizes how silly it is of her to think that he might be.

Her brows furrow, not catching the slightly sardonic tone of voice. "Corvo doesn't like him?"

"Dear Emily," and it's the third time he's said her name. "Corvo will never like any of your suitors no matter how worthy they are."

Emiliy blows air out of the side of her mouth. "Of course he won't."

"He will especially dislike them if they bring you white leaf tobacco, in any case."

Emily blinks, her jaw dropping in a shock of surprise. "What…how did you…?"

She turns her head to look at him, and their faces are incredibly close. His eyes seem like they're smiling, but his mouth is a straight line. It is, however, a bit hard to tell with their closeness. She takes a sharp inhale.

"Do you forget that this world is a playground for me? I see many things, Emily."

She is very well aware that he is a god and can see most things—but details, trivialities, things that are personal to her, still feel like an electric bolt. "What about…letters?" she asks.

"Books, pictures, journals. If it's lying around, I can see it."

"Then…what can't you see?"

She feels his fingers on her hip—or she thinks she can, with them being so near, the heat radiating through the space. She holds her breath.

"The only thing I can't read are the things not written with words. Emotions…thoughts. I can't decipher the actions you make unless I watch and study. I can envision possible futures, but they are infinite in number, in possibility," he says. "Even then, at times, I cannot follow the train of action of an individual, or the reasons why."

"And once you can, you have no more use for that individual," she finishes.

He hums in agreement. "Will you ever bore me, Empress? Make me vanish from your life?"

She thinks for a moment, as best she can with the bubble of heat around them, ruining her clear senses.

"My love for Wyman might bore you, Outsider," she says, and it's a truthful thought. There is probably nothing as boring as watching love and a happy ever after.

He has no reaction. His eyes only gleam, wet and bright.

"It might," he says. "But who knows what you will do, Empress. Are you in love? Will you marry, have children, find the happiness so many humans dream about in this man? Will you find happiness elsewhere? Will you leave a man broken in your tumultuous wake?"

She shifts away at the questions, like they are a stinging brand on her skin. He gives her a smirk before he swirls into smoke, disappearing into the inky black sky.

It raises a deep foreboding in her. It is so thick it's almost tangible. She can almost grasp it if she digs her fingers into her skin with enough forcible intent.

What does the Outsider see that she can't? If he is being truthful in seeing anything at all? He may see alternate realities, may see all the paths her life can take from this moment.

Manipulative he claimed not to be, but she can't be sure. She's met one too many villainous people to not be suspicious or skeptical, and a deity who enjoys the capriciousness of human emotion and who looks a condescending eye on the obsequiousness of his followers seems like one she should not readily trust. It is a consequence, then, that her heart conflicts with this very notion, and it is hard to be practical.

Perhaps she is manipulating her own mind, with her own conflicting emotions, and she's torturing herself with too much introspection.

It's been a dark thought she's long harbored since the end of her journey back to the throne, and one she's avoided with copious energy and vigor.

Who is she, now? What's changed and what's stayed the same?

She thinks about the correspondence she's had with Wyman, and how difficult they have become to write. Words elude her when she tries to write out the more personal details. When she can turn them into cursive, curling ink, the letters turn into puzzles, riddles, and they do not make sense to any sane mind. They become nightmares on the page, and she must crumple them and throw them into the trash. Scribblings of a madwoman, she thinks disgustedly on occasion. And yet, they make sense to her, and what does that make her, truly?

She holds onto the comfort that Corvo understands. He understood the first day, when she explained with every cruel, draining detail of her journey. Even when she couldn't hide her shame from being marked, he didn't mind like she thought he would have. He wasn't ashamed, and she was forever grateful for that small mercy granted.

She wonders what the Outsider believes. He's read her letters, and he's seen the landscape of her nightmares, she knows. He must have seen. Would a god call her mad, too?

"We'll see," she says, the vacuum of night sucking her words into the silence.


	5. v

v.

* * *

"Do you remember," she asks him, a week before Wyman is to arrive, "when I was a girl, looked after at the Hound Pits Pub. I found a rune, somewhere. It's…hard for me to remember where exactly I had found it. In the sand, off the shore, I think. Maybe underneath a rock or a seashell. I guess that doesn't really matter," she says, finding herself rambling. "The power I felt from that rune…it didn't feel like power. Not really. It felt warm, and at the time, soothing whispers came forth from it, subtle enough for me not to notice as I do now, but I remember being so curious about it, and drawn to it. I thought," she chuckles. "I thought it would bring good luck to me and the ones I loved. All it brought me," she ends, looking at him, "were nightmares."

"I do remember, Empress," he answers, a small smirk creeping onto his countenance. "I've…kept my eye on you for a long while." He gives a pause, and she doesn't realize he's thinking deeply until he speaks again, a frown forming on his lips. "I did not mean to make them nightmares. You were interested in sea monsters and fighting, not about etiquette of the throne or political hospitalities. You liked drawing, and exploring, nosing your way into situations where you were not needed. So, that's what I gave you—dreams about monsters and war, fighting and adventure." He shrugs apathetically. "However, I understand children less and less, it seems, as the decades go by. They are such malleable, resilient creatures, children. Hardly predictable and fun to watch, but I doubt I'll understand one completely before they grow up. Childhood does not last as long as adulthood." His tone flattens. "Maybe I gave you too much gore, or I hinted at too much destruction. I was inspired by the greed hopelessness manifested by the Rat Plague, in those days, and I mixed them with the fantastic beasts in your imagination." He smirks again. "Not exactly child fodder, is it?"

"Not at all," she says, shaking her head in reprimand, but she's smiling. "I don't remember specifics, of course, it's been too long a time. I do remember waking up with tears on my cheeks and being confused, night after night. They kept becoming worse—at least, I remember I felt like they were, until I took the rune out from underneath my pillow. I wanted to take care of everyone after those dreams. More and more, I felt the urge to become better. At ten years old, you can't do anything as Empress. I was helpless, and yet I had no idea how to take control of anything around me. I didn't even have a grasp of all that I was feeling." She shakes her head again, a loose strand of hair from her bun poking at her lip. "It's funny, isn't it, the things you remember from childhood. I remember emotions, but not quite what I did to have those emotions. I remember some of the things I did, but not why I did them. It's all very blurred together."

The tram is still running at this time of night, and it zooms past on the electrical railings. Distant sounds of conversation float up to the tower roof from the pubs, and the shops are beginning to turn out their lights from the windows.

After several passing moments, the Outsider says, "The mind is a powerful source. It's a beautiful machination of life and its mistakes through evolution. Near perfect, I've heard some humans say. I don't understand how they come to that conclusion when it is so unreliable with emotions and actions and memories and deciphering them, being so vulnerable to persuasion and being so accepting of terrible circumstances, breaking men when it is overloaded with any type of passion." He looks down at a drunkard on a corner street, stumbling into the bricks of a closed shop. He pounds on the door and, getting no response, screams a few profanities and throws an empty beer bottle through the window before straggling off into the shadows. "It will never be a perfect thing while people still call it perfect. Perhaps it would be, if apathy were to rule the world. Perhaps that would only make it worse. But what kind of world would that make this one, if that became true?"

Emily watches as the man who vandalized the shop is pulled from the shadows by an officer on patrol, who takes him into custody with several minutes of excessive effort. The belligerent drunkard puts up a hardy fight.

She turns to the Outsider, and when the lights from the street below hit his eyes at the right angle, it looks as if he has whites in the blackness that consumes them. "Maybe it's like a failsafe," she says. "We can only feel so much, or know so much, or remember so much, before the weakness of our mind breaks and turns mad. It gives us morals, keeps us from murdering anyone on the streets that looks at us the wrong way. It balances us, in that way."

She glances away, frowning a little as the questions she's been wanting to ask rises to her chest. It's the perfect set-up for it, the perfect train of thought and conversation. She takes a deep breath.

"You're not mad, Emily," the Outsider says, almost amused. She chokes on her breath, twisting toward him in a jerky turn.

"What?"

"Did you ever think for a moment," he continues, waving his hand in front of her face. She is taken to a moment in time, in the past, and she's looking down at herself, watching as she runs down the street of Dunwall, only two months ago, shrouded and darkened by Delilah's wrath and dreams. She shoots a few hounds, knocks out a few witches, appearing at different ledges of buildings with his power. "That you are questioning your own sanity? I know you think you are fallen into a state of madness, but did you ever realize that a woman who believes she's mad, questioning her own madness, is more than likely the sanest of all?"

The scene changes, no longer shrouded by Delilah and her grey landscape, but of the Dunwall just taken from her, bright and beautiful but still hateful of her, and she's running as a fugitive of her own home, without power, and yet still jumping from ledge to ledge, sliding through alleyways and windows, knocking out the guards who are as bewildered as she is.

"Do you notice how nothing changes?" he asks, his voice an echo in the scenery. "Your actions are steadfast and unchanging as you strive for the least violent course you can manage. But here you are, questioning what could possibly be wrong with you."

The vision disappears, and his black eyes take its place.

"Everyone is a little crazy, Emily," he says, and he smiles. It doesn't, for the first time, look treacherous or demeaning and that, in itself, is a bit of a shock to the system. "You didn't even kill Delilah, who was, and still is, and possibly will forever be your ultimate antagonist. So don't twist your natural greatness into pure insanity."

She swallows, grabbing her index finger and wringing it with an old habit of unease. "But I…"

"Just because you can't quite put into words your feelings of your entire ordeal doesn't mean anything significant in terms of who you are. Besides," he shrugs in a tiny indication of movement. "I found your writings and drawings over the past months fascinating. You see, when individuals connect with an item or create an item of the mortal world, the item holds that connection—that power—for as long as that person's heart continues to beat. Depending on the connection, the energy held within can be rich, layered, and filled with the person's essence. I can see these connections, like Delilah's paintings, or Anton Sokolov's, or sculptures and other pieces of art," he says, and he looks at her. His eyebrows raise just enough for her to notice, and she'd describe his expression as sardonic, if he didn't always look that way. "I wouldn't consider myself vain, but it's flattering to know that I would be…what did you say? 'Handsome if his eyes weren't so black'?"

Emily is immediately consumed by a rush of embarrassment. She stops wringing her ringer, clenching them into fists in her lap.

"I don't appreciate the invasion—" she begins indignantly, then falters. She sighs, knowing when the battle is lost. "Yes, I wrote something like that."

It's hard to look at his smug face, so she ignores him.

"I'd beg to differ on your opinion of your vanity," she says, a bit flippantly.

"You would?"

"I've seen several paintings of you around, either in apartments with shrines, or theory books about you and the Void." She looks at him. "I think you showed yourself to them much longer than you needed to, just so you could be well-known around the world."

"Ah," he says, and there's this warmth that radiates off him, almost like the feeling you get when someone laughs at the joke you said. "Yes. Those paintings and pictures and books about me. Don't mistake my vanity for others' obsession with me, Emily. Maybe they thought I was handsome, too."

Cheeks flaring, she groans in frustration.

"Just because I wrote one nice thing about you—"

"That's all it takes," he says with a smile, and it's the thing that inspired her written words in the first place. They're close to each other, like usual, but without breaching the point of contact. That seems to have become an unspoken rule after however many of their meetings. She can't remember when they began to avoid brushing contact with bodies and skin. They've never been lengthy touches, or anything more than a graze or a slight brush of a finger. Though, no matter how small the touch, it is taboo, after all. The Outsider is an amoral being, so he can't mind the contact, she thinks. Maybe it's her, she realizes, erecting this boundary between them, and it's strange to think that she's been so unaware of her subconscious effort until now.

"Well, do your best to forget," she says with annoyance, going to stand. "It's late, and I need to go to bed."

"We've stayed up until much later hours," he says, watching her with that odd amusement that's been in his eyes nearly the entire night. "Have I been responsible for your missed beauty rest, Empress?"

Her cheeks redden again, and it's more out of the implication of his words than their actual meaning. She fears they might give away her thoughts, but she doesn't think he's perceptive of her emotions enough to be able to follow a line of where her mind might go—especially concerning him. He can't know that sometimes she can't sleep, now, because she thinks about him. Not Delilah, or the state of Dunwall, or the witches and hounds and death. _Him._

"Yes," she simply answers, brushing off her tunic with her hands. "Goodnight, Outsider."

He floats beside her once she enters her room from her window. "Dream of me, won't you?" he whispers into her ear, his breath curling around her. "Better me than your nightmares, wouldn't you say?"

Then he's gone. She exhales a breath she didn't know she was holding. She doesn't know whether she should be surprised by the fact that he is aware of her dreaming habits or simply accepting.

She feels it'll help her state of mind if she chooses the latter.


	6. vi

vi.

* * *

The day Wyman comes to visit is the same day that many individuals of great importance also arrive in Dunwall. The day marks three months hence the restoration of Emiliy Kaldwin to the throne, and it is the newly proclaimed day for the semi-annual meeting of world leaders. Once an annual affair, it has been agreed upon to become biannual—if for only this year. Until more things settle, clear, and the state of all countries become in a less disreputable governance, then it will go back to the way it was.

Unfortunately, Emily thinks, cleansing each country from corruption, backstabbing, disloyalty, and intense political stances is an impossible and meaningless task with which to burden each other. However, due to the "ending" (and Emily takes that word with a grain of salt) of the war between Tyvia and Morley, a peace meeting was in order, which also gave a convenient time to talk about the treaties, embargos, and exporting and importing of goods from each country, the taxes, and the other important projects between the countries. Emily already has several ideas in the works for Dunwall and Gristol as a whole, but she has to grudgingly accept the fact that dealing with the other rulers is pertinent, even if it will be as uncomfortable as pulling out teeth. The one good news from this, however, is that the only true leader present is the Emperor of Morley. The rest sent assistants or diplomats to converge with the information already sent via mail.

Emily hasn't ever understood the formality of it, though each country was adamant to see how Dunwall was fairing; it is always eye-opening when a great power falls and rises anew. She suspects the diplomats are arriving on Gristol soil more out of curiosity from their rulers than wanting to bring the shiny tides of well-being and peace—but they wanted to make the long trip to the Imperial Capital, and it suits her just fine. She can say she's uninterested in the affairs of the other continents, professionally speaking, because she's supposed to be and will be in time. It's a mantra she forces herself to follow on a daily basis, attempting to keep the motivation hardened and secure. They are the second tier to her duty. Right now, however, Dunwall is her priority and her heart, as it will forever be. She won't leave Gristol until she absolutely, unconditionally, utterly has to, and even then she will more than likely have to be forced.

She paces in her chambers, holding her notes she's refined the night before into a bullet-pointed list, mind flitting over all the points she wants to address to these men. She's never felt any nerves for meetings like these, just the prickle of anticipation to begin and finish. It's why she's a little uneasy, because she is nervous this time. She's tried to decide why, and thinks it might be because of Wyman's presence. She hasn't seen his face for several months, and has only laid her eyes on his words inside his love-soaked letters. It's an odd sensation, being anxious to see him. He's always been someone she's looked forward to seeing to escape from the false faces she needs to make with the other royals. Finding herself almost dreading to confront him is so odd, it's unnatural.

She runs her eyes sightlessly over her list again, to give her some other thing to focus on besides her emotions. She spreads her hands over her pants out of habit, glancing down at the black, fitted top and the navy blue slacks it is tucked into. She taps her toes inside her favorite boots, gleaming up at her with a recent shine. She readjusts her cropped cardigan, and absently reminds herself to thank her chambermaid for picking out an outfit suitable enough to see the dignitaries at this crucial, impressionable time (though, she has a feeling Mary, her chambermaid, translated 'dignitaries' into 'Wyman'). She breathes a laugh, tucking a loose bang behind her ear, flicking her fingers over her bun. She's only had her around for a month, and begrudgingly to boot (Corvo believed she needed the womanly company, for whatever reason, and she couldn't bring herself to refuse his train of concern). Now, however, she's not sure how'd she get by without Mary.

A soft knock resounds on her door, and it's Mary of course, speak of the devil.

"Your Majesty?"

"Come in, Mary."

She opens the door a crack, poking her head in. "The nobles are here, your Majesty," she says timidly.

Emily nods, exhaling a sharp breath. Running her hand through her hair once more, she straightens her shoulders and makes her way into the hallway.

Let's get this over with, shall we," she mutters, and she puts on her most agreeable face.

When they all finally retire for the evening, Emily has dinner called up to the upstairs sitting area where she's reserved a refuge from the eyes and ears of nobles and personal time with Wyman.

After, when she gets to her room in the very late evening, she is worn and weary, her throat raspy and dry from talking for hours upon hours. She doesn't think she's talked this much in a day since she was a girl.

"Big day, Empress?" the Outsider greets her, the cynical edge ever clinging to his tone. She glances to the corner of the room and sees him floating ten feet in the air, his arms crossed.

"Long day," she corrects, beginning to walk toward her bathroom.

"You're wearing a dress," he says. "For the nobles?"

She's used to his regular tone of voice; there is always a hint of mocking swirled within their inflections, superiority sprinkled in between the letters. It's not quite condescending, but it's never nice or softened around the edges. She's used to it, but the words tonight give her pause. They contain disgust in them, and she's hit with yet another wave of fatigue.

"For dinner," she emphasizes. "Now I'm going to change and go to bed, so if you could leave-"

He warps in front of her, right before she can cross the threshold into her bathroom. She starts, awakened from the jolt of sudden surprise.

"For Wyman," he clarifies. She sees his eyes move, and it's always been hard to tell where they look toward or which way they do move, but he may be looking down upon her dress. She steps back a step, crossing her arms.

She's never been very fond of dresses. She wears them when she must, when it's appropriate, but she's always liked the casual comfort of slacks and jackets. It's also hard to move quickly in a dress and heels without compromising some form of modesty—a girl can't jump across rooftops in a dress.

Wyman commented on the change of fashion, as well, but it was out of the insistence from Mary that she must wear the dress to show off and remind the opposite sex of how very feminine she was.

She argued about it—she's nothing if not bull-headed and stubborn when it comes to the important things she cares about, like her comfort level—but after a dismal attempt at saying no, she gave in. It was almost embarrassing how quickly she was dismantled by Mary's persuasion, but once she felt how soft, silky, and informal the dress was (it was nothing like the stiff, clinging ones she's never gotten used to over the years) she was taken with it.

"For my chambermaid," she says, a bit acerbically. "But Wyman liked it very much."

"As would any man," he says, his countenance briefly curious at her reproachful look. "You've kept your hair up."

"Yes," she says, arching an eyebrow with annoyance. "I always keep it up."

"You're right," he says, raising a hand to touch one of the loose tendrils that has curled around her face. "He can be struck dumb by you even if your skin has boils and your hair is burnt."

"He'd draw a line at the boils," she says dryly, and to her immense surprise, the Outsider smiles at her.

"All the same, you are lovely."

She is so caught off guard, her jaw slackens. She recovers as swiftly as she can.

"I appreciate the compliment," she says. "But just because I gave you an inadvertent compliment before doesn't mean you have to do the same."

He gives her a strange look. She's never seen it before. It reminds her of when she slapped her first unwanted suitor. She bites her lip, but the look is gone quicker than it came. He brings his hand away from her face, clasping it with his other behind his back.

"There is a high probability that Wyman will come to your room tonight. Will you turn him away, or will you embrace him?" He smirks at her, and she wonders for a brief moment if the Outsider has enough feelings to be hurt in any capacity.

She sighs. "I don't know. It was nice talking to him, tonight. It felt...good. It's become...something is different."

"Perhaps you have outgrown him, Empress."

She plucks at a wrinkle on her dress. "It is hard to say anything like that. Besides," she says, needing to deflect. "Why do you care about any of this, anyway?"

"As I have said before Emily, I will fade soon enough."

She swallows. She's as uncertain to where her real feelings lie as it was before she got to see Wyman. She believed she'd know right away—as soon as she saw his face and he kissed her hand. She believed so ardently that it was like plunging into cold water when it didn't happen, when the immediacy didn't come, when her guard just wouldn't fall completely like she willed it to.

She glances up to the Outsider, who watches her so closely like an enraptured audience. She blames him, some, for this mess she's in. He's partly responsible for the broken state of her emotions, and she knows he knows. He must feel something in whatever odd, strange fashion he observes emotions. She's seen it, and he has yet to indulge her with the secrets he keeps in that realm of his mind and soul—if a soul is in fact what he has.

"I kissed him, tonight," she whispers.

He leans in closer to her face, beguiling and deceptive and confident. "And who did you think about when you did, Empress?" he whispers back.

With a plume of smoke, he vanishes around her.

And just like that, she thinks, she won't be able to sleep tonight.


	7. vii

vii.

* * *

"You were wrong," she tells him airily the next night she sees him. It's after the rest of the nobles have left, after a few days of accommodations in Dunwall. Wyman, being appointed the foreign emissary from Morley, can come and go as he chooses, or more aptly, as he sees fit. Being needed back in Morley due to the flimsy negotiations of peace and prosperity, he regretfully left with them.

Emily is saddened by his absence, knowing he will not be there to be called on when she so chooses, but it is just as well. She has things to do and visions to be met.

Today has been a long day, yet very and happily successful. So, being content and satisfied, those are the first words she tells him.

"The Empress, showing her arrogance this eve," he says, floating around her chamber. "I am stunned."

She rolls her eyes at his sarcasm, and she goes to sit on the edge of her bed. She begins to unlace her boots.

"About Wyman," she continues. "I'm sure you already know. You know all, don't you?"

"I only know what I want to know," he says, his tone unamused at her blatant, off-color teasing.

"That's right. I'm afraid I don't know much about you, Outsider, except for the things you allowed me to learn over those past months."

"I'm as mysterious to you as I am to everyone, Empress. Don't feel like you've a privilege to know more than the common man."

She watches him, trying to decide if his words hold any substance to support them. If they do, it gives her a highly uncomfortable feeling, like a pinch or bumping her hip along a railing. She shakes it off, needing to call his bluff.

"Shouldn't I?" she asks. "You visit me so often; I feel like I can call you a friend more than a mere acquaintance." She pauses as his face remains impassive. "Don't you?"

He rushes up to her, and she must place a palm behind her on her bed comforter to keep her upright. His eyes are rough and beguiling.

"Foreign concepts to me, Emily," he spits with darkened fervor. "Hate, love, friendship, affection," he lists. "These are but a drop in my emotional understanding. They take up minimal space inside of me. Four thousand years ago, there was no affection for a vessel no one understood, and time has a way of erasing those ephemeral intangibles mortals build their lives from. I can't remember what those feelings entail, not unless I watch what they do to people, what choices they decide and what it drives them to become. I attempt to learn what I can't quite remember understanding."

He tells these truths with indelible succinctness. It is fact, like reading words defining history and war statistics.

They give her a sudden, inconceivable sadness. He is a lonely creature in this way, not understanding, being perhaps the only of his kind. He doesn't care—he claims he can't, but it doesn't cease the empathy that blooms inside her chest for him.

She pulls the palm that isn't holding her upright on the bed up toward him. She grazes his cheek with her fingertips, and he remains still and quiet. He waits for her, the humming of his anticipation swells into her touch. She sighs, "I'm not sure I can trust that you feel nothing. Deity or not, all your years watching could arguably add up to knowing so much more than you claim," she says. She trails her fingers off his jawline, and she comes to rest them on his hollow sternum, heartless and without the telltale beat of life.

"Tell me," she demands, and she presses her entire palm into him. "Tell me you didn't watch over me. Tell me you can't feel the warmth of my hand through your shirt."

"You're always warm, Emily," he smirks, but his voice is a mere whisper.

She moves in closer, her face a hairs breadth away from his. Her nose hits his jaw, and she shudders at the contact.

"My breath against your neck," she says. Her hand curves up his chest to the crook of his neck and shoulder. Her fingers gently wrap around him in a playful grip. Balanced now, she lifts her other hand and tests them by the hair at the base of his neck. She wishes she could fully see his reaction when she ruffles her fingers through the ends. His is too stiff underneath her ministrations, and it is hard to tell if anything is affecting him at all.

She finally moves her face, just enough to bring her lips closer to his own. She's a little flushed, now out of control of her outward reactions, and she swallows, wanting desperately to hide it.

"Outsider," she says, breath wavering. "Do you feel what I do?"

"Empress," he says, and his voice is different. Not acidic or demeaning or sarcastic or sly. There is an undertone to it, something lurking beneath the surface, emanating through his flesh and into hers.

Not a heartbeat, no, she thinks, but something.

Overcome by this something, the emptiness that once was now abruptly overflowing with this something, Emily tilts her head to eat up the space. The air between them vanishes, like the smoke and shadows he keeps so near and dear to him. Their lips ghost over one another, and then touch, and then converge and press, pressing together until they are continuous with his spirit and her heart.

She's breathing heavy when they pull away, and for once he doesn't disappear.

"Empress Emily," he says, his hands gripping along the crest of her hips. The tension of his fingers casually bypass the barricade of her clothes. "You know as well as I that I feel something. Were it not for your love of this decrepit place, I would take you with me—into the unknown. Into forever." His grip tightens, and she loses the rest of the breath she had left. "Isn't it a pity, then, that forever is not an option?"

"It's…" she attempts to form words, but the thought is broken, and she has no answer that could change his correctly made assumption. The need to change it, to form a different path to be satisfied with the outcome, is at the forefront of her mind—even when this time it is merely a feeble, vain wish.

"It is a pity," she says, and her blood feels like sludge, sticking together in the chambers of her heart.

He grimaces—or smiles—it is impossible to tell with all the emotions rushing by. They stare at each other for a long, wondering moment. He cradles her face with the palm of his hand, and he tilts his head. His black eyes roam over her, and she feels as though she sees everything in their abyss—her indecision, her desires, her duties, her love, her million possible futures.

It is all there, laid before her like a brutal banquet for her eyes to feast on, piercing and sharp and honest. Then in a swirl of black and purple smoke, it is gone.

He is gone.

She sits there, and she tries to breathe again. She wonders if he'll come back.


	8. viii

a/n; and nearly two years later, I'll label this thing complete.

viii.

* * *

The clock ticks without abandon and without mercy. The brilliant hues of orange and dusky rose flutter and fall into the hands of crippled brown and snowy, slushy white. Autumn turns to winter, and hours would feel like days, Emily believes, were it not for the mantle of Empress resting on her brow.

Instead, two months pass without visitation from the Outsider. She is not surprised by this, though it does give her an off-hand anxiety that grows and grows each solitary day. He is outside of her thoughts during the daylight hours, but when the evening comes for her to retire, she can't help rubbing her left hand and wondering, wondering. The comfort is dim, and instead of warmth she feels the cold of lost possibilities.

"You've made me pathetic," she says to her reflection, one night out of many.

Wyman travels back at the end of the month, and though it's been six weeks hence, Emily feels as if she had only just seen him. She blames it on their continuous correspondence, with her mind hearing the lilt of his voice through the written word. She can see his smiles, and she can hear his laughter at the end of each quip his cursive twirls into the parchment.

She knows him so well, and he knows her as well as she'll allow. It's an unbalanced scale, and she knows it's unfair. He will still love her even if he knows everything about her—the mark on her hand she hides from everyone, the crueler stories of crawling back to the throne, the details in between. It is almost a betrayal, she thinks, keeping it all locked away. It has not, however, been purposefully hidden. It is moreso a trial of getting the correct words out of the deeper waters of her heart and into his own.

When he sits with her on the rooftop, like those many days of old—that other lifetime before the darkness and shadows—she has every intention of laying herself before him. He deserves that because he is, first and foremost, her friend.

"Wyman," she begins, taking a heavy breath, and she feels her muscles shake with the force. _Why is this so hard for her?_ she thinks. _Why is it all so impossible?_

He must see something in her face, because he rests a hand on hers. She realizes that she's wringing her index finger, anxiety-ridden and vulnerable, and she hasn't noticed.

"It's alright, Emily," he says, and he presents her with a small, sad smile like he knows she can't tell him everything. "I know it's been hard. I don't want to make it harder."

Her eyes blur at his words. He has always been so transparent and honest. It's a shame she can't be the same. Had she been before?

No, she thinks. She'd only been naïve and rebellious. It's easy to remember the bad qualities in these moments, melancholy and arduous as they always seem to be.

"I'm sorry," she says, wiping her eyes angrily with the back of her hand. "You deserve to know."

"It's not about deserving," he tells her, holding her hand. "I love you. That's what matters." He shrugs. "It doesn't change anything for me. I don't want you to worry about that."

It _will_ change something, her traitorous mind says. But he's right—it shouldn't change anything. Whatever it is she's holding onto is irrational, unfeasible, and unattainable. She's not even sure how to put into words what she's holding onto, and that's evidence enough, isn't it?

She gives him a deceitful kiss, and he retires soon after. She remains on the rooftop for a few more minutes, staring up at the starry spotlights above her. It's a chilly blanket, the dense shadows that wrap around her. They feel burdensome and suffocating this weary night, and she misses the confidence and surety it had given her before. When once she was never alone, there is now a heavy uncertainty. The darkness is an unknown, now, ripped away from her due to one intangible desire. It's almost comical how it's affecting her. She puts her left hand in front of her, curling it into a fist and feeling the bright blister of power. It radiates up her arm and to her shoulder, feeding a hot fire up her neck and into the back of her skull.

She has a menacing urge to blink across the rooftops surrounding her, to deplete all of her mana, to feel that strangely euphoric release from being reckless and running. It's a silly fancy—she isn't a child anymore, running away from court and leadership, but it is fun to tease the idea around. It's fun to remember the younger version of herself—and it's hopeful to think further that her younger version hasn't fully slipped away. It's merely been stretched, pulled to accommodate the trials of experience.

 _Perhaps you've outgrown him._

Her back involuntarily straightens at the old words that dash through her mind. She closes her eyes, unfurls her fist, and sighs. The fire vanishes within the layers of her skin.

Perhaps. Perhaps.

"A million possibilities," she echoes into the air. "And I decide on the one that doesn't exist."

She stands, turning toward the window ledge leading into her chambers. She walks into a block of shadow, and it's a sudden cradle of warmth. The contradiction makes her come to an abrupt halt. Her hand becomes a fiery bomb, undulating with an insidious force.

"I never said it doesn't exist," the voice says, melting into her ear.

She gasps sharply, turning around. The Outsider hangs above in the air, no more than five feet in front of her.

She is a mixed bundle—relief and anger flood her system at the sight of him, smirking with disdain, arms crossed in a holier-than-thou deportment. The picture can only be completed with a crown and scepter, perhaps a gaudy shawl, feathered on the edges and sparkling with jewels.

"The implication was clear enough," she answers, surprised at how strong her voice is in the silence of night.

He drops to the roof, feet landing with a succinct clap. His onyx stare hasn't changed. It drills into her, and she wonders for a mad moment what he sees in her standing there. She attempts to acclimate, the months' absence affecting her endurance. She holds the stare for as long as she can before she has to look away.

"Why are you here?" she asks finally.

"You said you considered me a friend, once. I'm here visiting a friend. That's a common custom mortals perform, is it not?"

His answer is filled with the sardonic, aloof disgust that, somehow, she's missed.

"That doesn't sound like a reason for you," she says. "Was the world not interesting enough?"

It feels as though he's glaring at her, but it could merely be the intensity.

"There is always the occasional backstabbing, lover's quarrel, murder. However, there is not one corner of the world that _isn't_ too peaceful, for my tastes." He sneers. "You're doing your job too well, Empress."

"I do it to spite you, Outsider."

He takes a step toward her, and her skin hums.

"Please do," he growls. "There isn't enough spite to go around."

"I highly doubt that," she says, and he takes another step. She resists the urge to take one. She must stand her ground. "Spite, I'm certain, is the foundation of Dunwall. I'm not sure how you missed that."

He takes two more steps, and he's almost upon her now. Her skin is bursting at the seams. "I didn't. It's boring."

She almost laughs at how angry he sounds, wrapping her arms around herself for protection from his eyes.

"The Empress smiles," he says, and she didn't notice this either. She can only seem to stare and do nothing more.

"Am I?"

"You haven't smiled in a month."

"Lying is a poor man's currency. It doesn't become you, Outsider."

"I wouldn't lie about something so trivial."

"My smiles are trivial?"

He seems as if he doesn't know what to say. His face is as impassive as ever, but the shadows curve around his jaw, and it clenches once.

"I feed off despair," he says, though it isn't hateful. "Which means, yes, your smiles are trivial."

"What a shame. I'll remember to smile more when you're around, to remain spiteful, you see."

She even feels her lips curl up the slightest degree more, of their own accord. The Outsider seems livid, but she's not sure if she's reading him correctly. His eyes are too black in the darkness for her to tell.

He moves faster than a blink, and his hands are gripping her hips. The force that he's exerting is almost painful, and her mouth parts slightly in surprise. She uncrosses her arms on reflex, landing her hands on his shoulders.

"Emily," he says, the rough reverberations washing into her. He leans forward and he is kissing her, their lips sealing with clumsy immediacy before the urgency slows, and her hand is nearly ripping apart, filled with sensation, burning and sparking all at once.

She pules at the overwhelming sensation running through her and them. They are connected again, spirit and heart, god and human. It is too powerful—it should be too powerful—and somehow, her skin stretches to accommodate the unrestricted energy flowing from him into her.

"You came back," she breathes once he pulls away minutes or hours later. The night is as still and silent as it was when he arrived.

"You've made the rest of the world tedious," he says. "I had no other choice."

Her stomach twists. His apathetic tone does nothing to tame the uncontrollable flutter of her heart.

"Oh," she says.

He grimaces—she likes to think it might be his smile. "Are you speechless, Your Majesty?"

"Don't sound so smug," she says, a bit teasingly. His lip curls.

"I'm never smug," he begins, but she cuts off his sarcastic reply by bringing his face down into another kiss. His words are stemmed immediately. The force he has is extraordinary, his intent impure and infective. It underlines his tongue, pulsates through his fingertips like an earthquake into her hips. He is dangerous—as dangerous as any man, Emily thinks. He can kill her, vaporize her, betray her. He can control her, decimate her independence. He can do many things, terrible things.

He can surprise her.

When they part, Emily says the first thing on her mind. "How long will it be until I see you again?"

"Was two months too long?" he says, tone smooth and sardonic.

"Yes," she says, swallowing her embarrassment at the admission. It was him, after all, who came back entirely on his own.

He smiles at her answer, and she doesn't feel so vulnerable when she sees it. It's human, handsome, and a quick flash of white before it's gone again.

"Time is different for me. Dates are insignificant." He tips his head to the side. "I will keep them in mind, nonetheless."

She raises a brow. "I'm shocked, Outsider. You will be aware of the days that pass?"

"What is it that mortals say? Actions show the heart of man?"

"Something like that," she says, and she feels a small smile begin to form. "I'm not sure if that relates. You have no heart."

He sneers. "It would benefit you to remember that, Emily," he says, a cold inflection dripping through the words. To Emily, it doesn't sound like a warning as much as it does a fact. It would benefit her to remember everything about him.

She runs her right palm down from his shoulder to his chest, approximating where his heart would be. "I know."

He blinks down at her. His face turns grim and serious.

"I've fooled with many humans over the years," he says, a needlessly abrupt confession. "In many ways, with their spirits, their minds, their bodies."

She considers this for a moment. "It would alarm me had you not," she answers.

This only increases the darkness penetrating his face. "I feel something, Emily, but I cannot tell you what it may be. I am selfish, and I want all of you."

She gazes at the black slates of his eyes, trying to determine the inflections of light that cross over them. "I'm flattered," she whispers. "You'll have to court me longer before I'll allow you to have…all of me."

The idea is haunting and electrifying all at once.

"Court you? Is that what you think I've been doing?"

"I don't know what they call it in the Void," she answers facetiously. "But that's what it's called in this world."

"I can infiltrate your dreams," he says. "I can transport the fibers of your mind. I can enslave you to me, as I see fit, completely, eternally. But why should I, when I can't contain your emotions, your thoughts, or your actions? No. To me, courtship leads down the path of enslavement, and enslavement is exceedingly unsatisfying. You will never have all of a being that way. Their essence will allude you. No, Emily, I want the fabric of your skin, the layers of your mind, the soul through your eyes. I want to peel it apart. I want to know. All of you, to me, is _everything."_

It is unfathomable by mortal standards. Emily knows this immediately from the deep, godly depths of his words.

He stares at her, only the shine from the stars giving away the movement they make. He stares at her face, and parts of her face, and she wants to know so much more—so much more.

Her hand comes up to touch his cheek. "Someday," she says softly. "Someday, you'll have everything. And so will I."

He touches their foreheads together in an oddly and uncharacteristically affectionate notion. Emily closes her eyes against the touch, and in a moment, his grip releases, and there's a sigh in the air as he deteriorates into the smoky black soul of night.


End file.
